Is it legal to imitate restaurant recipes?

There is a proliferation of books, both printed and electronic (downloadable from the Web), that claim to tell you how to copy your favorite dishes from your favorite restaurants. Some of these are better than others, but they all beg the question: Is it legal to “mimic” recipes in this way?

These days, with the music industry going after people who use file-sharing services to illegally post songs for others to copy, and with prominent warnings against FBI copying pasted on every movie DVD we rent or buy. , is a natural question. People wonder if they are breaking any laws by cloning a restaurant’s most famous recipe, either by passing the instructions or by cooking and serving it to their friends.

Of course, I am not a lawyer. But I’ve talked to a couple of lawyer friends and several restaurant managers. The bottom line is this: if you cook your favorite steak or lobster dish (or whatever) copied from Big Name Restaurant, even if it’s an exact duplicate, you don’t need to worry about a SWAT team breaking down your door and taking it away. . Nor will an army of lawyers come to your kitchen.

Now, if you decide to open your own restaurant with dishes copied from well-known chain restaurants, and if you are so unsubtle as to give them the same names as the originals, maybe You have problems on your hands! In the absence of this unlikely scenario, you are probably safe. But we’re not talking here about doing business with other people’s recipes, right? (If you are contemplating something along those lines, then you really should consult an attorney.)

Cooking for friends can be fun. It can be more fun if you serve them dishes that are exactly the same as their favorite restaurant. If that is your intention, and you are doing it in a private setting, you can relax about the law. The only question then is, which dish do I want to clone and where can I get a genuine recipe?